Two women — an Indonesian and a Vietnamese — will be charged on Wednesday with murder over the killing in Malaysia of the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader, Malaysia's attorney general said.

Police have said the women smeared VX nerve agent, a chemical on a U.N. list of weapons of mass destruction, on Kim Jong Nam's face in an assault recorded on security cameras in the Malaysian capital's airport on Feb. 13.

U.S. and South Korean officials believe Kim was the victim of an assassination orchestrated by North Korea. He had been living in exile, under Beijing's protection, in the Chinese territory of Macau, and had criticized the regime of his family and his half-brother Kim Jong Un.